Grand View University built student awareness and confidence with MCode For Students

Building motivation beyond athletics

Grand View University is a private liberal arts college with a strong athletic culture. Of its incoming freshmen, 57% play in college athletic programs, and 39% of those student-athletes identify as first-generation college students. When athletics drive so much of campus life, academic development, personal growth, and career exploration can take a backseat. The result is often frustrating academic experiences, higher dropout rates, and major or career confusion, especially for first-generation students.

To better engage and support students beyond athletics, Sara Anderson, Assistant Director of Grand View’s Career Center, looked for resources that could help students connect their motivations to their academics and goals.

Anderson explains the challenge in her own words, “It’s not sustainable for a college student to solely be motivated by sports. Students need to understand their motivations and learn how motivation impacts both their athletic and academic interests. We needed resources to help students choose which activities to get involved with, see what value their contribution brings to the world, and gain the verbiage to convey their hard-to-name feelings about it all.”

That search led her to MCode For Students. She set out to give students the tools to uncover their motivations, explore their goals, and find alignment with their academics and activities.

Starting with academically at-risk students

Anderson co-led a recovery credit course for academically at-risk students and brought MCode For Students into the course as a pilot activity.

As she explains, “MCode For Students allowed us to pause with students and hear what they were fired up about. It created an opportunity for students to relate to their motivations while beginning to identify the hurdles and trip-up points that might have caused low academic achievement.”

After reviewing their personalized reports, students saw more clearly what led to their at-risk status and why they felt disconnected from their studies and campus life. That newfound awareness, paired with the course’s other support, helped students make improvements to their college plans and find better ways to motivate themselves and stay on track.

Expanding the pilot to incoming freshmen

Later that year, Anderson ran MCode For Students again, this time with two sections of incoming freshmen, in a course built around Motivations and career. Throughout the semester, course assignments, class discussions, and group work kept students engaged with their motivations as they worked toward direction and clarity. The personalized reports:

• Supported class discussions about “students’ unique motivational contributions to the world.”
• Helped students understand who they are and the value they bring to the table, and feel empowered and energized.
• Provided new vocabulary, the words and phrases they needed to speak confidently about how they’re motivated, what makes them unique, and how to better listen to and understand others.

Even when MCode For Students wasn’t required for an assignment, Anderson found that students kept turning to their Motivations as a resource for personal clarity. She also noticed that the peer-to-peer element of the work strengthened connection and relatability between students while building self-confidence.

The end-of-semester survey backed up what Anderson saw in class. 86% of students found their MCode For Students results helpful, and 73% felt more confident exploring academic and career options after learning their Motivations.

On the career-readiness side, 80% of students agreed they were more confident expressing their value and presenting themselves professionally on resumes and in interviews.

Anderson tied those numbers back to what she sees in practice. Greater self-awareness, she points out, leads to better matches when completing applications, searching for internships, and choosing positions to apply to.

Student feedback echoed the same theme:

• “I understand myself as a person today so much more.”
• “MCode For Students gave me direction.”
• “This was the stepping stone to confirming how I show up in the world.”
• “It gave me a new view of how I might be able to motivate myself for homework or other things I don’t really want to do.”

Anderson sums up the broader value, “Whether a student is changing a major or struggling with big decisions around self-identification, MCode For Students offers activities to spur new thoughts and ideas about how a student impacts the world.”

What’s next at Grand View University

Anderson’s vision is to bring MCode For Students into Grand View’s required first-year courses, where students are most likely to benefit from connecting with peers and understanding themselves early in their college experience.